


Flashback

by tifaching



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bobby SInger - Freeform, Community: sharp_teeth, Flashbacks, Gen, Hell, Hurt Dean Winchester, Post Hell Trauma, Post hell issues, Protective Sam Winchester, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-02
Updated: 2010-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-12 09:06:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tifaching/pseuds/tifaching
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean thinks he's got something under his skin.  He needs Sam's help to get it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashback

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: Dean or Sam. It starts as a tingle under the skin...I leave it up to whoever tries this prompt as to where it goes from there.  
> At the sharp_teeth horror comment meme site on LJ.

"It's not right, Sam. They can't get out. Please, help them get out!"

Dean's been mumbling this nonsense over and over from the back seat of the Impala and Sam has no fucking idea what he's talking about. The monster they'd been hunting tonight had been new to Sam, though from Dean's reaction to it he'd definitely seen it before. From the way Dean had gone dead white and frozen in place while the creature's claws had come inches from disemboweling him, Sam was pretty sure he could guess where Dean knew it from. Consecrated silver rounds had dropped the beast, but not before it had made a good start of peeling Dean's skin from the wounds the claws had opened.

"You have to finish, Sam. You have to finish so it can start. If you don't get this done, it won't begin again and you can't leave me like this. They're under there Sam, I can feel them. It hurts to finish and it hurts to start, but it's worse if you leave me in between. Please don't leave me in between!" Dean finishes on a scream and Sam pulls over to the side of the road and leans into the back seat. Dean is clawing at the bandages Sam had wrapped around his abdomen, his hands red with blood. "I can do it myself, you made me do it enough times! I can get it done."

"God, Dean stop! Just fucking stop it, would you?" Dean's hands are still pulling at the bandages and Sam grabs them and holds on tight. Dean has lost a lot of blood and from the way he's acting there had to have been some kind of hallucinogenic on those claws, but Sam has no idea what its effects will be or how long they will last. He needs to get Dean somewhere to treat his wounds and he needs to call Bobby ASAP, but first he needs to keep Dean from ripping his bandages off and bleeding all over his baby. Dean will kill him if he lets that happen.

Dean's blood slippery hands pull away from Sam's and begin to rub at his bare arms, digging into them with his nails. "I can feel them Sammy. Please, it didn't finish. Please, Sam!"

Sam just stares into his brother's face, wanting to look away but unable to. He's seen Dean in bad shape in a multitude of ways since his return from the pit, but this is the first time he's looked into Dean's eyes and seen hell staring back at him. "Okay," he replies in a shaking voice. "Okay, Dean I'll finish. But we have to get back to the room, man. I can't do it here."

"Can't wait, Sammy. They can't get out. Can't get out." Dean's voice gets weaker as he goes on and his head falls against the seat as he loses consciousness. _Thank God_ , thinks Sam as he guns the Impala for their hotel.

Dean's still out when they arrive and Sam drags him into their end unit under the cover of darkness. He lays Dean out on one of the beds and then goes back out to grab the med kit from the Impala. The first thing he does on return is to start an i.v. in Dean's arm to start replacing some of the fluids his brother's lost. Dean hasn't regained consciousness, but he's twitching on the bed, rubbing himself against it in his sleep. Next Sam carefully removes the bandages from Dean's middle and cleans and sutures the cuts, carefully sewing muscle and then skin. As Sam finishes the last stitch, skillfully tying and cutting the suture, Dean starts to come around. His hands immediately begin digging at his arms and he lifts his head to stare groggily at the long line of stitches stretching across his belly and his eyes widen in horror.

"No!" he yells, trying to sit up on the bed. "You did it backwards! Backwards, Sam!" His hands begin to scratch at the stitches, but Sam is ready. He injects a dose of Valium into Dean's i.v. and Dean's eyes lock on Sam's as he slips into a sedated sleep. Sam's own eyes burn at the hurt betrayal he sees in Dean's before they slide closed.

Sam wants nothing more than to sink into an exhausted sleep himself, but he calls Bobby first. It's the middle of the night, but Bobby's used to them disturbing his rest. They have the special Winchester skill of not even having to be alive to do it. Bobby listens to Sam's description of the creature, of what it did to Dean and what Dean's going through now, and is silent for a moment. Sam's heart sinks as Bobby tells him he's never heard of anything like it, but he'll hit his books and get back to Sam when he finds something. His tone says this is for _Dean_ , and he'll be damned if he doesn't find something to help the damn fool boy out. Bobby ends with a question Sam's been wondering about himself.

"How sure are you that there isn't something in your brother now trying to get out? You say he seems to know what it was. Maybe it's not just a hallucination."

"I don't know, Bobby. I hope to hell there isn't anything in there, because I wouldn't have a clue how to get it out. It seemed like he was trying to tell me, but he wasn't making any sense. I'll try holy water and silver, hell I'll try everything we know, but I'll have to wait 'til he wakes up to know if it works. Let me know if you find anything on your end. Thanks Bobby."

Sam pours a little holy water into Dean's mouth and along his suture line.There's no reaction, though Dean's hands are twitching even in unconsciousness. Next Sam makes a small cut along Dean's forearm with a silver knife. He chants and mixes herbs and when he's tried everything he knows, he sits down in a chair and watches Dean writhe and moan in his sleep. When he starts awake a few hours later, Dean is sitting naked on the bed, carefully picking out the last of Sam's stitches and pulling the wound back open.

Dean looks up at him as Sam surges out of the chair. "Why are you leaving me in between, Sammy? You know that's the worst. When it can't get out. Please. Let me fix it?" The pain and panic shaking Dean's voice stops Sam for a moment, then he falls on his brother, pinning Dean's hands to the bed. In Dean's weakened condition, Sam is able to hold him there while one hand gropes in the weapons bag beside the bed and comes out with two pairs of handcuffs. He pulls Dean's arms up and out and cuffs each wrist to a bedpost. Dean's lying perfectly still now, his gaze watchful as Sam pulls ropes out of the bag and ties Dean's ankles to the posts at the bottom of the bed, leaving him spread eagled across it.

"That's right, Sam. That's good. If you're going to do it, you have to tie me down first, that's how it's done. I started for you so you don't have to, but you have to finish. You did it backwards, but it's okay now. You just have to finish."

Dean's staring at Sam expectantly, and Sam really doesn't want to but he has to ask. "Finish what, Dean? Finish how?"

Dean's stare becomes angry and he pulls at the cuffs. "Finish _what_? Finish _how_ , you fucker? You were there every time! You always _brought_ the fucking thing! You made _me_ do it most of the time and now you're making me tell you? Is that part of it now?" Dean shoots Sam a hesitant look and calms slightly like he sees something in Sam's face. "Okay. Okay, if it gets it done, I'll say it." He gestures with his chin towards his newly gaping wound. "You have to finish opening it up. Take it all the way, Sam. They won't come through skin, not til everything else is gone. But if the skin's not there, they'll come out before there's nothing else left. You have to take the skin off, Sam. Then they'll come out and it'll be finished. Don't worry, the skin always grows back. How could it start again if it didn't?"

Bile rises in Sam's throat and he stares in horror at Dean's pale face. "Jesus, Dean. You want me to fucking _skin_ you?"

Dean's screaming at him now. "If you were going to make me do it myself, you wouldn't have tied me up! So either you're going to do it, or you're going to leave me in between and let them eat me from the inside out! I can feel them getting stronger, like fucking electricity under my skin. Soon they'll start and it'll be too late. Too late to let them out. Don't let them eat me again, Sam. Do you want me to beg? I'm fucking begging you!" Dean's sobbing now in terror and Sam sinks down onto the bed beside him and cups his brother's chin in his hand, turning his head to face him and staring straight into Dean's pleading, terrified eyes. He's going to need to put Dean under again soon, but right now he wants to get a few things straight.

"It wasn't me, Dean. Whatever it was, just please believe that it was _never_ me." Sam's hand slides around to the back of Dean's head and begins to stroke his sweat soaked hair, as his brother shakes his head and starts to speak in a voice so low Sam has to strain to hear.

"The first time you gave me the knife and told me to start peeling my skin off, I laughed and told you to go fuck yourself. That nothing would be so bad that it could ever make me do anything like that to myself. I learned better. You _taught_ me better. After that first time, whenever you would give me a choice, I always chose the knife. You always watched to make sure I did it right-nice and slow, not missing any spots. Eventually you got me enough practice that I could get it all off in one piece. It was hard to get my back, but you know you can accomplish things in hell that you could never do up here."

Sam's crying himself now at the thought of some demon with his face making Dean skin himself over and over until he actually got good at it. "No, Dean, I don't know. I really don't." Dean looks at him doubtfully and keeps talking and Sam doesn't think he could get any more sickened than he already is by what Dean's told him, but as his brother's words keep coming Sam has to clench his jaw harder to keep from vomiting all over the room. Dean's voice becomes softer and softer as he talks himself out until finally his eyes close and Sam can breathe again. He administers more sedative to Dean and restitches his abdomen, gently bandaging it after he's done. He stares at Dean, belatedly realizing that his brother is naked, before taking the blanket from the other bed and covering him with it. Dean is stretched out across most of the bed and Sam's not untying him until he's sure he's not going to hurt himself again, but Sam squeezes himself alongside his brother and lays one arm across Dean's chest. This way he'll be sure to wake up if Dean starts to struggle against his bonds. Or, he tries not to think, if something starts eating its way out of his brother's body. It's not like he has a choice here. He can't skin Dean, no matter how many times his brother begs him to. It may have worked in hell, but it sure won't work up here. Sam's stomach clenches in anger as he thinks of Dean and how bad the alternative must have been to make him choose to peel the skin from his body over and over again to avoid it. Everything Dean's told him runs in circles in his mind until he drifts off into a restless slumber terrified that he'll wake to Dean's ravaged body.

When Sam does wake, it's light in the room and his hip is vibrating. He rolls off the bed with a groan, noting that Dean is still out and still in one piece. He flips his phone open and talks quietly as he walks across the room.

"Hey, Bobby."

"Sam. How's your brother?"

"Still sleeping. He doesn't seem as twitchy so that's good right? And nothing ate him alive overnight so I call it a win so far. Find out anything about our creature?"

"It's called a marlak. It's rare, don't see 'em much anymore. Just you idjits luck to run into one. Its m.o. is to claw you up, then eat you alive and as far as I can tell there's nothing on the claws to inject something into you or to make you hallucinate that they did. I did find lore that it's a distant relative to another creature. One that's never been seen outside the pit except for in old, old myth. That one's even more bad news. Sounds like just the kind of thing Dean was talking about last night. "

"Okay." Sam fights to keep his voice steady. "Okay, Bobby, thanks. I'll call you when he wakes up." Sam hangs up the phone and his stomach finally does what it's been threatening to do all night, so he runs to the bathroom to heave into the toilet. The creature didn't do this to Dean. He had seen it and flashed back to hell. Sam's been begging his brother to talk to him-to tell him what happened in the pit, but he wishes he'd _never_ found out about this. Sam vomits until his stomach is a knot of acid and he feels empty and hollowed out inside. He wonders if this is how Dean felt after having his guts eaten out, but he knows it's not even close.

He returns to the bedroom and sinks down into the chair beside the bed. Dean looks pale, but peaceful and when Sam checks his pulse it's steady. Sam wants Dean to wake up, but he never wants to see his brother looking at him like he did last night. Like he thinks that Sam could ever do that to him. It makes his heart hurt to think it, but he desperately hopes that the only hell he sees looking out of Dean's eyes is the one he's been living since he got out.


End file.
